Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / Michael Woolverton / To meet the demand of the 2007 Energy Bill will require a new approach to ethanol production in the United States. The question persists: how can the ethanol industry in the United States produce 21 billion gallons of ethanol from cellulosic sources? This challenge will require changes in the facilities currently manufacturing ethanol, the collection and storage methods to which the Midwestern farmer is accustomed, and a drastic change in farm production practices. Several different methods of cellulosic ethanol production are being examined. One such method is to change the focus from starch based ethanol to ethanol produced by harvest, collection, and manufacture from corn cobs. Research has included surveys, development of economic models, and focus group meetings to determine the feasibility of corn cobs as a viable raw material source for cellulosic ethanol. Findings indicate that: corn cob collection is feasible for the Midwestern farmer. According to the economic models presented in this thesis, Midwestern farmers can benefit economically from the collection of corn cobs. Further, the collection of corn cobs allows for current ethanol plants to be upgraded with new technology without major change in the manufacturing processes. The focus of this research was to determine which method of corn cob collection was preferable for Midwestern corn producers.

Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / Allen M. Featherstone / This thesis analyzes the hiring and selection processes of five Farm Credit Services (FCS) Associations within U.S. AgBank to determine the effectiveness of potential employee testing and profiling practices as a predictor of success (defined as tenure and retention) within the organization. The data provided by the five FCS Associations were used to analyze whether that the results are a successful tool in predicting the success of a potential employee. Firm managers are acutely aware of the high cost of onboarding a new employee regardless of the industry in which the firm operates. Since employee training and education often takes months, and in some cases, years, it is critical that organizations select qualified, driven, and success oriented employees so that they can minimize the cost of hiring of new employees. To select the best candidates, many firms use personality profiling examinations to determine the candidate’s fit, not only for the job, but also for the company culture. Analyzing past results can assist managers in evaluating the outcomes of the time and cost spent seeking the best employee possible. Analysis was conducted by estimating a binomial logistic regression model using the test scores for loan officer hires from five Farm Credit Associations for the time period of 1999-2009. Each of the examined character traits was an independent variable, along with variables for gender and whether the candidate was a recommended-hire. The dependent variable is whether the employee is still employed with the Farm Credit Association. Results show that while some of the independent variables are statistically significant in predicting the success of an employee, others are not. The implications therein justify the value of the predictive index as an asset to hiring managers, and also provides direction on which traits are most highly correlated with one another and with the overall composite score.

<p>In recent years, government aid agencies and international organizations have increased their financial commitments to controlling and eliminating malaria from the planet. This renewed emphasis on elimination is reminiscent of a previous worldwide campaign to eradicate malaria in the 1960s, a campaign which ultimately failed. To avoid a repeat of the past, mechanisms must be developed to sustain effective malaria control programs.</p><p>A number of sociobehavioral, economic, and biophysical challenges exist for sustainable malaria control, particularly in high-burden areas such as sub-Saharan Africa. Sociobehavioral challenges include maintaining high long-term levels of support for and participation in malaria control programs, at all levels of society. Reasons for the failure of the previous eradication campaign included a decline in donor, governmental, community, and household-level support for control programs, as malaria prevalence ebbed due in part to early successes of these programs.</p><p>Biophysical challenges for the sustainability of national malaria control programs (NMCPs) encompass evolutionary challenges in controlling the protozoan parasite and the mosquito vector, as well as volatile transmission dynamics which can lead to epidemics. Evolutionary challenges are particularly daunting due to the rapid generational turnover of both the parasites and the vectors: The reliance on a handful of insecticides and antimalarial drugs in NMCPs has placed significant selection pressures on vectors and parasites respectively, leading to a high prevalence of genetic mutations conferring resistance to these biocides.</p><p>The renewed global financing of malaria control makes research into how to effectively surmount these challenges arguably more salient now than ever. Economics has proven useful for addressing the sociobehavioral and biophysical challenges for malaria control. A necessary next step is the careful, detailed, and timely integration of economics with the natural sciences to maximize and sustain the impact of this financing.</p><p>In this dissertation, I focus on 4 of the challenges identified above: In the first chapter, I use optimal control and dynamic programming techniques to focus on the problem of insecticide resistance in malaria control, and to understand how different models of mosquito evolution can affect our policy prescriptions for dealing with the problem of insecticide resistance. I identify specific details of the biological model--the mechanisms for so-called "fitness costs" in insecticide-resistant mosquitoes--that affect the qualitative properties of the optimal control path. These qualitative differences carry over to large impacts on the economic costs of a given control plan.</p><p>In the 2nd chapter, I consider the interaction of parasite resistance to drugs and mosquito resistance to insecticides, and analyze cost-effective malaria control portfolios that balance these 2 dynamics. I construct a mathematical model of malaria transmission and evolutionary dynamics, and calibrate the model to baseline data from a rural Tanzanian district. Four interventions are jointly considered in the model: Insecticide-spraying, insecticide-treated net distribution, and the distribution of 2 antimalarial drugs--sulfadoxine pyramethamine (SP) and artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs). Strategies which coordinate vector controls and treatment protocols should provide significant gains, in part due to the issues of insecticide and drug resistance. In particular, conventional vector control and ACT use should be highly complementary, economically and in terms of disease reductions. The ongoing debate concerning the cost-effectiveness of ACTs should thus consider prevailing (and future) levels of conventional vector control methods, such as ITN and IRS: If the cost-effectiveness of widespread ACT distribution is called into question in a given locale, scaling up IRS and/or ITNs probably tilts the scale in favor of distributing ACTs. </p><p>In the 3rd chapter, I analyze results from a survey of northern Ugandan households I oversaw in November 2009. The aim of this survey was to assess respondents' perceptions about malaria risks, and mass indoor residual spraying (IRS) of insecticides that had been done there by government-sponsored health workers. Using stated preference methods--specifically, a discrete choice experiment (DCE)--I evaluate: (a) the elasticity of household participation levels in IRS programs with respect to malaria risk, and (b) households' perceived value of programs aimed at reducing malaria risk, such as IRS. Econometric results imply that the average respondent in the survey would be willing to forego a $10 increase in her assets for a permanent 1% reduction in malaria risk. Participation in previous IRS significantly increased the stated willingness to participate in future IRS programs. However, I also find that at least 20% of households in the region perceive significant transactions costs from IRS. One implication of this finding is that compensation for these transactions costs may be necessary to correct theorized public good aspects of malaria prevention via vector control.</p><p>In the 4th chapter, I further study these public goods aspects. To do so, I estimate a welfare-maximizing system of cash incentives. Using the econometric models estimated in the 3rd chapter, in conjunction with a modified version of the malaria transmission models developed and utilized in the first 2 chapters, I calculate village-specific incentives aimed at correcting under-provision of a public good--namely, malaria prevention. This under-provision arises from incentives for individual malaria prevention behavior--in this case the decision whether or not to participate in a given IRS round. The magnitude of this inefficiency is determined by the epidemiological model, which dictates the extent to which households' prevention decisions have spillover effects on neighbors. </p><p>I therefore compute the efficient incentives in a number of epidemiological contexts. I find that non-negligible monetary incentives for participating in IRS programs are warranted in situations where policymakers are confident that IRS can effectively reduce the incidence of malaria cases, and not just exposure rates. In these cases, I conclude that the use of economic incentives could reduce the incidence of malaria episodes by 5%--10%. Depending on the costs of implementing a system of incentives for IRS participation, such a system could provide an additional tool in the arsenal of malaria controls.</p> / Dissertation

Diss. (sammanfattning). Uppsala : Sveriges lantbruksuniv.

This dissertation explores the creative ways in which particular individuals and the community in general, responds to economic crisis and perceived marginality. It shows how residents of El Golfo de Santa Clara, a small community in the upper Gulf of California, with their meager incomes, fuller utilization of kinship and other social sources, participation in illegal and informal activities, migration, and political participation, are contesting their marginality and resisting the social and economic outcome of state policies in the area. Residents' feeling of frustration and disempowerment increased during the early 1990s. Because of ecological changes and structural adjustment policies the shrimp industry in the Gulf of California collapsed. Household salaries dropped drastically; fishermen were unemployed and families had to look for different strategies to survive. In the midst of the economic crisis residents of El Golfo were told of the decree of a biosphere reserve, which initially had the objective of restricting fishing activity in the area. People's responses involved individual and collective performances and discursive critiques of state authority as represented by the management team of the biosphere reserve. Residents pressed their rights to get involved in the management of the area as well as their rights to get infrastructural services for the town. People's responses show that marginality and poverty had nothing to do with a 'natural' or 'biological' condition, as presented by some earlier anthropological studies of the Mexican countryside, but with a historical economic inequality and the distribution of wealth within the country. The peoples' responses to their economic and political situation underline a critique to their perceived identity as a "rural community" by the managers of the biosphere reserve and authorities that categorized rural people as backward, isolated, uncivilized, and unimportant in the larger social formation. These local responses to the political and economic context suggest that anthropologists should take a more engaged approach in the study of the Mexican countryside.

This dissertation analyzes the social history and current struggles of Analco and Santa Cecilia, two Chinantec peasant localities of Oaxaca, Mexico, which experienced the boom and bust years of coffee agriculture subject to the vagaries of the global market for this cash crop. It examines the last twenty-five years of State interventions toward the Indian peasantry, focusing especially on current neoliberal economic and social policies, to reveal how they have affected local well-being and livelihood strategies. In the course of describing food security and nutrition, I show how Analqueno and Cecilieno men, women and children have coped with major changes in Mexican politics and the economy; changes toward which they have devised multiple responses, but upon which they have had limited control. In particular, I explore how members of these communities weighed options and maximized opportunities in their attempt to maintain, restore or enhance food security and local well-being during the coffee crisis of the 1990s. I show how, in the last decade, agricultural diversification for both home consumption and the market, and a partial retreat from commercial agriculture centered around coffee have become significant. Finally, I consider the nutritional effects of the coffee boom and bust years on the local populations paying particular attention to children, teenagers, and gender differences.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-11, Section: A, page: 4805. Adviser: Madhu Khanna. Includes bibliographical references. Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California at Berkeley, 1990. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / Allen M. Featherstone / The objective of this thesis is to determine if contract farming of fresh strawberries in Oceanside California is financially feasible. This is being considered as an alternative to managing the 185 acre fresh strawberry farm. The farming business is owned by a large fresh fruit marketing firm. As an independent custom grower I would not be subject to the same constraints as the marketing firm. No changes to management structure or product quality would be necessitated by this change. Assumptions for this study are specific to operating requirements for producing winter strawberries in North San Diego County in California. The cultural practices described and inputs used are considered to be usual for a well-managed commercial farm. The cost and returns are based upon actual historical data and representative of similar if not exact cultural practices and material inputs. The conceptual model used to guide the development of this study was taken from a generic feasibility study framework. It served as a controlled process to analyze the situation and determine the financial outcomes. The economic and financial viability analysis includes costs and returns per acre, monthly cash costs, sensitivity analysis, and overall profitability. The method used to assess the dimensions of viability was to weight them by evaluating key characteristics for relative strengths and weaknesses. The recommendation based upon this assessment is that the overall viability of the proposal is more than 80% and therefore merits the development of a comprehensive business plan.

Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / Jason Bergtold / The dramatic changes that have taken place in the production agriculture industry in the last decade have the Long Family Partnership wanting to reassess their farm land management strategy. As land owners, they feel as though they might be missing out on profit opportunity by continuing their current lease agreements as status quo. The objective of this research is to determine the optimal land management strategy for the Partnership farm that maximizes net returns for crop production, but also taking into account input costs and risk. Three scenarios were built: (1) a Base Case of the current share-crop and cash lease Agreements; (2) the possibility of farming their own irrigated farm land and continuing to cash lease land used to produce dryland wheat; and (3) deciding to farm all the irrigated and dry land farm acreage themselves. In order to do this, a whole-farm budget spreadsheet model was generated to assess alternative land management scenarios. The difference in net returns between alternative land rental scenarios were then compared and followed by a sensitivity analysis and stochastic analysis using @RISK software. The findings concluded that there was greater potential to increase net farm income while still conservatively managing risk by investing into their own farm land, as not only owners but also as operators. The stochastic and sensitivity analysis confirmed that farming their own land was more sensitive to changes in yields, prices and input expenses. However, even in consideration of the additional risk, the probability of increasing net farm income was greater for the scenarios in which they farmed their own land.